


In Memoriam

by mrstater



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Episode Related, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, House Mormont, Spoilers, Wakes & Funerals, episode 8x3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 09:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18657640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrstater/pseuds/mrstater
Summary: The Queen mourns her knight.





	In Memoriam

**Author's Note:**

> It's been years since I wrote Dany x Jorah fic. Episode 8x3 compelled me to write one more.

"Heartsbane," Samwell Tarly answers when Daenerys asks what the Valyrian sword is called.

She doesn't remember asking, but she knows she must because she feels the ache of the words in her throat. The swell of emotion--again--which she tries painfully to swallow but tears itself out anyway. Her tears fall upon the blade, sullied with gore.

_Heartsbane._

Jorah defended her with it--to the death. What had she ever given him in exchange for his life? Only heartbreak; she hears the echo of his voice, half-embarrassed when he confessed to it, only yesterday.

"I didn't love you well enough," she sobs, touching her forehead to his bloody, muddy forehead, still cradling him in her lap. "Forgive me."

A tear shimmers on his cheekbone, her own. She trails her fingertips over it, wiping it away with the pad of her thumb, and remembers the catch of his breath when she did that before. She leans in again and brushes her lips to his cold, cold skin.

"Dany!"

She doesn't look up as Jon Snow stumbles over the corpses, the dozens Jorah slew. Drogon raises his head and gives a warning growl which reverberates through her, though he doesn't strike at Jon.

"Oh, Dany," he says, going to his knees beside her. "I'm so sorry--"

" _Don't_."

His hand hovers just above her shoulder, Daenerys flinching away from the touch before his fingers can settle on her. _Don't touch me, don't call me Dany, don't say you know what he means to me._ Jon snow knows nothing, not even who he is. She tightens her arms around Jorah, and the protective circle of Drogon's length shrinks around them both. Jon gets up, murmuring to Samwell as together they leave.

Daenerys weeps alone.

Eventually, when her tears are spent, others come: two of her few surviving Dothraki; Unsullied, including Grey Worm, who somehow lived--and beside him, Missandei--though Daenerys is too shattered by her loss to be thankful for who she still has; at a tentative distance behind them, a grizzled Northman who might be a Bear Islander. They try to take Jorah away from her.

"You can’t have him," Daenerys protests, "he is--"

"Please, your grace." Missandei approaches, leery of Drogon, though he does not regard her as a threat to his mother. "Let them take Ser Jorah from this place..." She cringes at the corpses. "...to one where you can grieve for him properly."

Daenerys’ head feels so heavy as she nods. She relinquishes Jorah to the men, the warriors, and they lift him so gently.

"Ser Jorah was precious to you," Grey Worm says as Missandei helps her to her feet.

 _Is._ Alive or dead, Jorah is, and always will be precious to her. She sees, in the dawn light, that tears shimmer against their earthy skin.

The Bear Islander starts to pick up Heartsbane, but Daenerys says, "Give it to me."

He does, without hesitation. She is startled at the weight of it in her hands. How did Jorah have the strength to wield it? He had always been her strength...even as he sustained blow after blow from wight blade for her. She feels each piercing one on the trudge toward Winterfell. At least Jorah does not. She closes her burning eyes against the memory of his dying rasp. _"I'm hurt."_

When she opens them again, she sees that theirs is not the only group bearing bodies. The weary survivors of the Battle of Winterfell struggle to separate their own dead from the enemy's; it's a difficult task when most fought for both sides. There are so many, they pile up like stacks of firewood against the castle walls.

Daenerys nearly drops Heartsbane as she lurches forward to grasp at Grey Worm's sleeve. "Ser Jorah isn't just another corpse. He's first of my knights…" _Was._ "He must lie in a place of honor…"

"He will, your grace," Missandei assures her.

A table in the great hall is the best they can do. The dead are everywhere inside, too, but at least he has better than the blood-stained floor. Someone brings a basin, and she tends to him herself, washing his face, his hands before she wraps them around the hilt of Heartsbane. She places stones over the closed lids of his eyes.

"Excuse me, your grace."

Despite her desire to be alone with Jorah, the broken voice makes her turn. The Bear Islander from earlier, grimy face slashed through by tear stains, cradles a small body with long dark hair.

"It's the Lady Mormont," he says. "I thought…perhaps she may rest with her kinsman?"

Daenerys nods as Lyanna Mormont--still a child--is laid beside Jorah. He'd introduced her to Daenerys as the head of their house. Lyanna had been coolly respectful, a warmer reception than Daenerys had from most of the Northern houses, and thanked her for returning her wayward cousin. Even in armor, Daenerys can see that the body is broken.

"She slew a giant," says the man. "They were the last of their name."

Daenerys weeps with him.

"Oh, House Mormont," she says through her tears. "I would have raised you up among the Great Houses of Westeros."

This seems to comfort the man, but Daenerys feels hollow.

Jorah didn't care about greatness. Love was all he ever wanted.

Love is all she has to give him, now.

_Too late._

"I will give Ser Jorah a funeral," she announces. She can give him that, too. Before she can do anything else, she _must_ do this. "And Lady Mormont."

The Bear Islander thanks her, his gruff voice reminding her of Jorah's, and goes off with a bow.

Beyond the walls of Winterfell, the Dothraki build a funeral pyre, not as large as Khal Drogo's, but enough to indicate the respect they have for the Andal. Jorah and Lyanna are moved there; the great hall is needed for the wounded. Ragged sigils fly on either side of the pyre, the black bear rampant against the forests of the Mormont ancestral home. _What do you pray for, Ser Jorah?_

"I'll scatter your ashes there, among the pines." She promised him, so long ago, she would take him home. He never broke his vow to her; she will not break hers.

With so many dead, so many to tend, Daenerys doesn't expect a great attendance. But she stands before the pyre and looks out to see Dothraki and Unsullied, Lord Varys and Tyrion Lannister, all of the Starks to honor their loyal bannermen, Samwell Tarly, and a number of Northmen, women, and children. And Jon Snow, at her side, holding a torch. Their faces swim in the tears that well in Daenerys' eyes.

When her voice is steady enough, she says, "Ser Jorah Mormont was exiled from Westeros for selling men into slavery…"

She sees Sansa Stark bristle at the oblique reference to her father.

"…but he repaid that debt ten thousand fold when he stood by my side to liberate the enslaved people of Meereen and Astapor. Those very Unsullied who held Winterfell against the Army of the Dead."

She gestures to Grey Worm and his ever-erect, proud ranks, though their numbers are sorely reduced.

"Ser Jorah's deeds brought honor to his House, to the North, and I will see that they are not forgotten. He was my most trusted advisor…"

Tyrion Lannister gives her a half-smile.

"…my truest friend. Here he stood."

She can speak no more. She turns to Jon, who offers her the torch.

Daenerys touches the flame to the pyre.

As Jorah's body catches fire, a mad part of her wants to walk into the flames and lie beside him as he is consumed. His voice in her head stops her, as it did not at Drogo's funeral. She recites the words of House Mormont over and over in her mind. Here she stands, until the bodies of Lyanna and Jorah and even the banners of their house are no more.

Heartsbane remains, gleaming as though reforged by the fire. Daenerys kneels with it in the ash and smoke and says, "Blood of my blood."

A Dothraki bloodrider's pledge to his khal _._ How far she's come from the Dothraki Sea, how long since Jorah, her only friend, called her _khaleesi._ Once she told him, _Not a queen--a khaleesi._ When did it become the other way around?

Sword in hand, Daenerys rises and turns her back to the pyre, faces Winterfell where the remnants of an army rise from the ashes to prepare for conquest. Ser Jorah fought and bleed and died for her to be Queen. The Night King is dead.

Queen she now shall be.


End file.
